Re: To many Robots already

Oh dear /deity/ - the internet is commercial oO

Apart from the predictable "my browser has no ads", there is a worrying perception here that commerce has no place on the internet. Particularly advertising.

Well, ahem, the market maker function, aka the stall keeper, has been around for a while and will probably outlast the people here on this forum. Yes, it's bigger and more corporate now, but more or less the same. Shout your wares and you may get lucky.

Now, the invisible hand needs some boundaries, and that is where we are floundering a bit in the internet age. As it seems, Europe is more prepared to set those boundaries than the US. China, I think, have no perception of public good, other than their own.

Mobilegeddon, evil or not, appears to be a response to changing market conditions. Adam would be proud.

Re: 90mm thick?

If that were true

Then it means liberals post/write more frequently than conservatives. Which may well be true but seems a little counterintuitive.

I recall [sorry no reference] a study suggesting the baffling 50/50 right/left split in most democracies over time is due to instinct (or genetic make-up if you will). Since the right generally complain and are disgusted more about /everything/ than the left, on balance, ceteris paribus, you'd expect the opposite of this study.

Tesco Clubcard success is not data, it's vouchers

Put simply, the quarterly massive mailout of vouchers are the single biggest driver of footfall that Tesco has. Their whole supply chain is geared towards it. On top, people spend the "extra" money on high margin items like an extra bottle of wine, not more potatoes.

It's astonishing Sainsbury's didn't get this, and instead went with Nectar points.

Sure, Dunnhumby did some clever stuff with which discount vouchers to mail and how to tailor the range in each store, but that pales into insignificance compared to the quarterly bonanza of the vouchers.

I think Tesco's problem is, as often, corporate hubris. "Retail is detail" as James Gulliver (Safeway) said, and Tesco forgot that. They also got stuck in the middle between discounters and Waitrose/M&S.

I for one...

welcome our closer to light speed than ever particles produced by man overlords. Though you will be older than you think before you disintegrate in a shower of information. Unless you turn black hole on us and sc... Oh I see, sleeping still. Never mind.

Re: The fad now leaving from platform 4 ...

@Pete 2

OK, Iet's assume you work with code (sorry, second time today I have a dev go). That's like saying "let's get users to write some proper prose in my /whatever/ application, otherwise it doesn't matter what my code behaves like". Yes it does. It raises the standard. Borderline analogy, but you get my point.

Sure, it is a way to sell more tellies, but that's how the market economy works. As a side benefit we get better DR and a bit more wow from our downtime. Not so bad, eh?

In the diaspora..

Off topic, sorry, but using one of the, ahem, VPN services that are readily available, you can trick your not so smart TV (well, you're tricking the provider really) to think it's in the UK. Or anywhere for that matter.

Just change the DNS and iPlayer etc will play nicely.

The beauty of this is that the /family/ can just /watch/ television with no faff. Happy dad. You just need to buy a UK set. Amazon are usually happy to oblige.

Re: The tech industry is in a mess for one simple reason:

It's just creepy

This puts a big black boot across the line of what it is appropriate for any company to get involved with. When to have children is a very personal decision than a company, or the state for that matter, should not have an opinion on. This is saying "we prefer you to have children later, please".

I'm sure this is filed under Innovative HR Policies whereas it should be chucked in the Inappropriate basket.

Slot screws and flat screw drivers have an evil pact

It's more subtle than the time travel and teleporting that has been observed above.

They agree, well in advance of comming into contact, years some time, that as soon as they touch, one, or both, will slightly change dimension or angle of attack, so that the attempt of transferring torque by the user will be rendered useless. So no screwing takes place.

A self sacrificial part of the pact is that the screw agrees to shed just enough material so that each subsequent attempt of torque-transfer will be increasingly futile.

At the advent of mechanised screw drivers the rate of material shedding was upped to instant from the screw community. So the first attempt is also the last.

Re: Will your car kill you to save another?

It's funny how we get obsessed, "I Robot" style, with edge cases of car scenarios where morality enters the picture.

In reality, meanwhile, meatsacks kill each other on the roads at a very steady rate through stupidity/tiredness/distraction, none of which driverless cars suffer from.

Planes land themselves all the time, at least some times, and we seem to be fine with that. I think the difference is pretty much everyone drives, and couldn't possibly imagine a robot doing it better. Pilots, OTOH, are a bit smarter than that.

Re: Stupid headline

@AC

Do please tell what a "yet" belonging to cyclist nazi is. Is it missing an "i", as in yeti? That would be quite a sight incidentally, an abominable snowman running after a militant bicycle rider needing to be overtaken, in the middle of a sweltering London.

(I know the apostrophy is the curse of native English speakers. But it's still amusing.)

I disagree. Sitting down to watch a film and getting that cinema feeling really does matter. I struggle with the Samsung 8000 full 1080p from bluray. It's just looks so plastic. I've fiddled with everything [ahem] on that screen, but it just doesn't look right.

In fact the 720p Pioneer kuro on standard DVD is way more pleasurable.

So it's not the number of pixels, it's what you do with them, as the vicar said.

Hard for hardware manufacturers - not so for the rest of us

Sure, like cars, the replacement cycle is getting longer. Also like cars, there's no longer status value in a PC, possibly the opposite bar gaming rigs. And indeed PCs are "competing" with more devices. Further, a senior bloke at work has tried to switch to tablet working.

However, for some things a tappy keyboard is a necessary thing. I'd like to see my kids complete their projects on a tablet. Also, though it chews time, Candycrush and iPlayer is not killing the PC. And for the tablet bloke, I giggle every time his iPad falls over in a meeting, And his presentations are even more sh*t than the standard ppt stuff.

As it happens, amongst other things we run a 10-year old XP laptop that the wifey prefers because of the proper (not wide) 15" screen and 1440x900 res. Stripping everything has made it boot fast. The much newer Windows 7 (widescreen) laptop reluctantly does Skype duties only.

I don't love M$, but the PC death is over-rated. At least in my western eyes.